I spent most of the day yesterday in meetings with one of the wealthiest philanthropists in the country, essentially making a pitch for something I made for studying material objects over the web. Here’s a recording of part of the pitch and the result:

Unless you want to hear me go on and on for 7 minutes, you can just skip to 7:10 to hear the reaction. At 7:24 you can hear a secondary reaction.

I was told by his staff that this was one of the best outcomes possible from the guy, so that’s great. The secret to making a great pitch? Be honest with yourself. Do you truly believe in the thing you’re pitching? If you do, that will come through. If you don’t, then please reconsider what you’re about to do. Really. Think about what it really is, and call it by what it really is.  You might then reconsider what you’re doing with your whole life. In the extreme, Bill Hicks puts this best:

To celebrate, last night I continued working on a massive canvass that was gifted to me a couple months ago. This is the first time I’ve tried painting on a big canvass. I found it pretty fun with Dragonforce playing in the background, but even then it was still very labor intensive. The paint I was using just didn’t seem to go on very smoothly.

Obviously I still had most of a can of electric orange paint around, so:

Before I knew what was really happening, as celestial object was being born, front and center:

Then I brightened the center and widened the corona a bit:

To get the center so bright and spotty (like a star) I dripped some white gas on the drying paint– you know, camping cook stove fuel. It didn’t mix with the paint at all and instead caused it to form globules and then as it quickly evaporated away, it left some very bright exposed canvass in the middle.

I’ll probably paint over it depending on how it looks when I get home tonight– I fear one of those day after things where you fall asleep all proud and shit and the next day you look (or listen) to what you’ve done and can’t imagine what the hell you were thinking.

Very tight schedule today and tomorrow and there’s a larger story that’s been building over the last few days that I’ll hopefully be able to share in a day or too.

OK, out into the cold rain for another meeting downtown, catch you tomorrow.